CHAPTER XI
Sir George Barclay and most of his staff had a knowledge of Eastern prisons from the outside. They knew them to be abodes of misery; dark, insanitary dens, alive with vermin, squalid and filthy, filled with a gaunt, ragged crowd who, all day long, held piteous hands through iron bars, begging for food from the passers-by, the only food they were given.
The Governor's staff did not look forward to a sojourn in El-Ammeh. As for Sir George himself, he had other matters than his own personal comfort to dwell on.
His thoughts were always with Pansy, and always in his heart was the prayer that she would succumb to the effects of Cameron's bullet, and not have to meet the fate his enemy had in store for her.
After the one interview the Sultan had ignored Barclay. But during the long journey, Sir George often saw his enemy, and if he thought of anything outside of his daughter's fate, it was to wonder why Casim Ammeh looked so different from the wild hordes he ruled. Exactly like a man of the well-bred, darker, Latin type, certainly not the son of the savage marauder whom he, Barclay, had had to condemn to death.
On reaching El-Ammeh, the Europeans found the quarters awaiting them very different from what experience had led them to expect.
They were ushered into a large courtyard dotted with trees and surrounded by high walls. Into it a dozen little cells opened. Within the enclosure they were free to wander as they pleased; a glance around the place showed them why. The walls were twenty feet high, and as smooth as glass, and there were always a dozen Arabs stationed by the gate, watching all they did. At night they were each locked in separate cells.
It was impossible to bribe the guards, as Cameron and his fellow officers discovered before a week had passed.
For the imprisoned Englishmen the time passed slowly. Often they speculated on their own ultimate fate. Whether death would be their portion, or whether they would be left there to stew for years, after the manner of more than one European who had had the misfortune to fall into the clutches of some desert chief.